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Last thing before I go do something else. I don't know how I got roped into this discussion, because I actively avoided it after seeing what it was becoming. Also, I don't even hate hitscan. H5's utility was awesome in a vacuum, and I adore H2 and v7. I just like projectile more. I like leading. I'm not passionate enough about the subject to argue about it, because if the rest of the game is good, I'm still going to have fun.

But with the onset of Halo on PC, I think Multi was right; hitscan weapons are going to cause balance issues on M/KB that projectile could help alleviate. But he already explained it better than I could, so I'll just leave it be.

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On the topic of PC balance issues, AR/SMG starts need to be completely removed from the MM rotation for MCC on PC. You've got a game that rewards precision on a system with controls that give you unparalled precision, let people use that. Imagine how much shittier AR starts on Halo 3 will be when the other team can use a mouse to aim the BR. AR/SMG starts already have massive snowball issues on console, which will only be worse with how much more accurate people will be with a M/Kb.

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thats not what happened though, i made it a point to focus on the core principles of projectile when involved with player movement, and i was only met with semantics about random/ unpredictable movement. i specifically mentioned trace aiming and its ignored. multi gave examples from CE about rockets, nades and snipe, all of which are irrelevant to comparing how a "rope" of shots with projectile removes the potential ability of a good player to get 100% accuracy against a strafe, wheres in hitscan the good player can still flick and trace at any distance. In every single game with projectile, its either so fast that its irrelevant unless at extreme distance or the player closes the gap to use it just the same as hitscan.

1: It removes the ability for a "good player" to not have 100% accuracy only as much as that's true when sniping in Halo 1 & 3. You can't dodge incoming projectiles, for all intents and purpose from the receiving end it is instant. Unless there is quite literally an opening so small to shoot through in a map that you HAVE to hit the shot within 1 frame, there is quite literally no provable example of projectile not being able to replicate everything a hitscan can accomplish with additional skill and balancing opportunities. Calling it a "rope" of projectiles, again, is completely disingenuous and betrays reality.

2: The idea that a "good" player should hit all shots completely ignores the fact that good is not just determined by someone's gun skill but their movement skill. If my movement skill is good, it should show. If I am the best player in the world what opportunity do I have against a semi-decent MKB player who's crossmapping me with a hitscan weapon? None, is the answer. There is quite literally nothing I can do as a "good" player to address a hitscan weapon OR fast moving projectile. Your definition of good is flawed.

3: The most skill based game ever made in history, Quake, has the fastest movement speed that I've ever seen in a video game, and is built around a rocket launcher that has the slowest projectile speed I've seen in an FPS. Go to the quakeworld forums and tell them you think strafing is random and that you like hitscan and see how they react. Everything in quake is hitscan outside of the nailgun and rocket launcher and even they hate hitscan ubiquitously. Why? Because there's literally no counterplay to someone who can flick a rail on you, which is basically half the population playing that game. You're trading guaranteed damage. In a perfect world there would exist a game with such an unbelievably high skill ceiling that a player with a single point of health could take on an entire team and emerge on top. That world will literally never exist with a sandbox of hitscan weapons, it can't. The skill ceiling of a hitscan weapon is extremely palpable, from the AR's in Fortnite to the Lightning Gun in quake - it's the same exact tracing skill and it's very noticeable how quickly a half decent player can learn to do it.

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Lots of awesome mid-air rockets in this if anyone isn't familiar what the most exaggerated example of slow projectiles w/ fast movement looks like.

Turns out it makes the most skill based franchise of all time. And we're not even talking about this ^ We're talking about Halo with a fraction of this move speed, no mid-air control, and 1-3 frame speed projectiles while crossmapping. Gimme a break man, let hitscan die.

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So regardless of your own personal tastes on projectile vs hitscan is there anyone here who thinks that the “randomness” and other factors involved with projectile actually shrinks the skill gap between players? Does a hitscan weapon allow a great player to even further differentiate themselves from good players? If I had a seasoned hunter and someone who doesn’t shoot fire a 100 shots at a moving target with a rifle and then have them repeat the same test with a laser is there anyone that thinks the score gap would be smaller in the rifle test than in the laser test?

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It's important to keep perspective in that Halo is a completely unique game within the universe of FPS. Talking about projectile vs. hitscan in absolutist terms will never be helpful because Halo exists as a mutant freak hybrid of a shooter where a lot of things are unconventionally mixed, matched, and generally fucked up. One thing that remains a staple of Halo (on console anyway) is that you are actually expected to land most of your shots at basically any range with the utility weapon. That's how the game has always been played, and that's part of its strange, fragile balance. Projectile vs. hitscan plays into that massively.

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You're actually nuts like are you just sitting here trying to argue for no fucking reason? What the actual fuck do you even want? Yea no shit it shouldn't get to this point. But it did. And that's done. So what are we gonna do now? Move on or keep talking shit? Like what are you trying to accomplish here. Stop getting WEIRD with your morality bullshit. Stop trying to stir shit for no reason. No one was even talking to you yet here you are. Starting arguments for literally no reason. For what? When you made these responses what did you hope to accomplish? What's your end goal here?

I have never once in my life had this much of an argument after one side is willing to get over it. You realize how nuts this is right? Like I hope you see this and are not just trying to be a dick on purpose. How the fuck can you sit and criticze people that want to move forward and address this? That's not a normal reaction. At all. Stop.

Ah, the real beast comes back out after he doesn't get what he wants.

Projectile is better for Halo.

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Going to throw in my two cents on the issue since I was tagged for whatever reason.

In the context of Halo games hitscan is objectively worse then projectiles in Halo where there’s nothing that’s done to make it more then whoever shoots first wins in the vast majority of gun fights there’s next to no outplay potential. While with projectiles you can actually miss your shots and it takes skill to actually to get the perfect kill time and it also makes using the Sniper rifle actually skillful and more impactful because not every average joe can use it and get montage clips.

Now outside of the context of Halo hitscan can actually be skillful like in CS where it has predictable spread patterns that’s an entirely different story but Halo has none of that so hitscan in Halo is just straight up easy mode weapons. I don’t see how anyone who can considers themselves a competitive player can support hitscan over projectiles on a Halo game with a solid netcode and a utility weapon that has a low perfect ttk and a high ttk which leads to a shooting skill gap and is much harder to achieve with hitscan.

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Going to throw in my two cents on the issue since I was tagged for whatever reason.

In the context of Halo games hitscan is objectively worse then projectiles in Halo where there’s nothing that’s done to make it more then whoever shoots first wins in the vast majority of gun fights there’s next to no outplay potential. While with projectiles you can actually miss your shots and it takes skill to actually to get the perfect kill time and it also makes using the Sniper rifle actually skillful and more impactful because not every average joe can use it and get montage clips.

Now outside of the context of Halo hitscan can actually be skillful like in CS where it has predictable spread patterns that’s an entirely different story but Halo has none of that. I don’t see how anyone who can considers themselves a competitive player can support hitscan over projectiles on a game with a solid netcode.

Stop being WEIRD you CREEP. YIKES LMAO FAM

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Going to throw in my two cents on the issue since I was tagged for whatever reason.

In the context of Halo games hitscan is objectively worse then projectiles in Halo where there’s nothing that’s done to make it more then whoever shoots first wins in the vast majority of gun fights there’s next to no outplay potential. While with projectiles you can actually miss your shots and it takes skill to actually to get the perfect kill time and it also makes using the Sniper rifle actually skillful and more impactful because not every average joe can use it and get montage clips.

Now outside of the context of Halo hitscan can actually be skillful like in CS where it has predictable spread patterns that’s an entirely different story but Halo has none of that so hitscan in Halo is just straight up easy mode weapons. I don’t see how anyone who can considers themselves a competitive player can support hitscan over projectiles on a Halo game with a solid netcode and a utility weapon that has a low perfect ttk and a high ttk which leads to a shooting skill gap and is much harder to achieve with hitscan.

Hitscan has nothing to do with Halo gun fights being who-sees who first. The main reason that gun fights in Halo games are shit is the insane aim assist and magnetism (plus the strafe could always be tightened up). Try playing with aim assist disabled in a H2A custom game (or try just aiming at your teammates) and tell me that it's too easy and the guy who shoots first always wins.

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the nailgun vs lightning gun is a prime example of how trace and flick aiming goes out the window in favor for spam damage. You act like you cant out strafe someones aim, thats where the movement skill shows. there are always factors like timing, cover and angles that involve movement skill and are emphasized by hitscan, whereas they are diminished by projectile. that fact you bring up the rocket so much just tells me you dont know what youre looking at when you watch quake, let alone play. its an explosive radius that is used as prediction or point blank where strafe literally doesnt matter. the mid air shots are just lead shots on a target that is moving in a single direction. the nailgun is useless in a strafe battle vs the lightning no matter who is behind it, unless they do exactly what i mentioned before and hold a narrow pass where strafe is all but eliminated or close the gap enough to where the projectile speed is irrelevant. in this case the nailgun is in fact a "rope".

what would be a counterplay to a hitscan rail flick shot if not an interference by an inconsistent mechanic? someone who flicks a rail on you should be awarded damage because it was a skillful shot. If they hit the shot on someone moving fast as fuck they still deserve that damage because it was that much harder to hit. cover, angles and timing are all direct skill counters that dont involve you missing because of projectile travel time. there are projectile weapons like the sniper that are treated exactly like hitscan in 99% of situations, then there are slow projectiles, the relevant weapons, that eliminate a huge part of raw aim duel possibility once you move fast and change direction. Lecturing on quake like you have any experience let alone ability to beat anyone is laughable.

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the nailgun vs lightning gun is a prime example of how trace and flick aiming goes out the window in favor for spam damage. You act like you cant out strafe someones aim, thats where the movement skill shows. there are always factors like timing, cover and angles that involve movement skill and are emphasized by hitscan, whereas they are diminished by projectile. that fact you bring up the rocket so much just tells me you dont know what youre looking at when you watch quake, let alone play. its an explosive radius that is used as prediction or point blank where strafe literally doesnt matter. the mid air shots are just lead shots on a target that is moving in a single direction. the nailgun is useless in a strafe battle vs the lightning no matter who is behind it, unless they do exactly what i mentioned before and hold a narrow pass where strafe is all but eliminated or close the gap enough to where the projectile speed is irrelevant. in this case the nailgun is in fact a "rope".

what would be a counterplay to a hitscan rail flick shot if not an interference by an inconsistent mechanic? someone who flicks a rail on you should be awarded damage because it was a skillful shot. If they hit the shot on someone moving fast as fuck they still deserve that damage because it was that much harder to hit. cover, angles and timing are all direct skill counters that dont involve you missing because of projectile travel time. there are projectile weapons like the sniper that are treated exactly like hitscan in 99% of situations, then there are slow projectiles, the relevant weapons, that eliminate a huge part of raw aim duel possibility once you move fast and change direction. Lecturing on quake like you have any experience let alone ability to beat anyone is laughable.

Okay, first of all this is why no one is jumping at the chance to talk to any of you in discord.

You also just made my point for me when you said there's projectile weapons that function 99% the same as hitscan weapons. I'd venture to say that is actually 100% because no matter how hypothetically far someone is from you in any game, to recreate that shot with even a pixel of shot lead & bullet drop would be preferable to hitscan and achieve the exact same result. There is literally no situation where a hitscan weapon is the better alternative for balance.

Again - you should reasses your definition of what a "good" player is because you continue to simplify it to essentially imply 100% accuracy. A good player is the one that wins the encounter, and that can imply a lot more than what you're boiling it down to which is essentially trace aiming; which actually devalues many other skillsets. There are lot more skills that make a player good outside of gunskill, movement being the most obvious. Mental skill being the other branch of game design. What you're advocating for would create a ludicrously low skill cap.

Also worth noting that the idea that you deserve to hit any shot at any range without any counter play is very concerning. Until you can explain to me the fundamental difference between you throwing a cross map grenade and having the enemy simply walk away from it, and missing a projectile shot Im not sure what to tell you. You seeing something on your screen does not entitle you to react with it, anymore than simply seeing a location on a map gives you the right to have an immediate path to get there. Like anything else, earn it.

Final note: Your camp's ability to end every post with the claim that we're probably not as good as you are at video games tells me all I need to know. It just comes off insecure throwing out hollow claims that you don't even know are true are not. What are you implying, that the better you are the more your opinions on design are worth? If that were the case let's just go right up the ladder and ask the best player in the world and have him decide what's the correct direction for all video games in the future since he'd clearly be above your heads. Rapha and Ogre 2 determines all, is that what you're implying here?

"that﻿﻿fact you bring up the rocket so much just tells me you dont know what youre looking at when you﻿watch quake, let alone play. its an explo﻿sive radius that is used as prediction or point blank where strafe literally doesnt matter. the mid air shots are just lead shots on a target that is moving in a single direction"

Except that every shot in that montage is impressive because it was a direct hit, not a splash damage shot. What are you even getting at. The reason I linked that video is because you made a ridiculous claim that people could somehow strafe out of incoming shots (literally impossible, again) as if that were even a bad thing. So I linked a video showing that the most skill based game ever made has an ENORMOUS discrepancy between player speed and projectile speed but that is exactly one of the largest contributers to the skill cap. The absolute insane shot lead.

"Lecturing on quake like you have any experience let alone ability to beat anyone is laughable."

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I think a lot of the discussion in absolute terms about which is definitively better in every game isn't a good way to discuss this.

I think certain games depending on their movement mechanics, whether it's on mouse or controller, and then the individual weapons within that game, lend themselves more to one or the other.

I get that hitscan fans prefer the consistency. This consistency means that most gunfights will be won by the superior aiming player if they see each other at the same time.

While I agree with hitscan fan's criticism that projectile is not as consistent from encounter to encounter, I also do not believe it is completely random if the movement speed, weapons and bullet speed are well balanced. I believe it's probabilistic. Predicting a movement pattern and reacting quickly to an opponent's change in strafe is a probabilistic skill that over many encounters will bear out the better player as over many encounters they will more often predict opponent movement and be able to make better long distance adjustments than a less experienced player. This is on top of the mechanical skill of accurately aiming.

Personally, I prefer projectile in classic slow movement Halo because given that slower movement and acceleration, it is more reliable than faster arena games to be able to accurately predict and react skillfully to an opponent without a frustratingly random feeling to it that would probably be more present in fast movement games.

I won't argue with a hitscan fan if that's what they prefer though. I get why they like it. I think they've both been shown to work in Halo.

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I think you guys are taking the fact that shot lead is less intuitive than hitscan and labeling that as inconsistency. There is nothing inconsistent about projectiles. If I whiff a whole clip in PUBG against someone running across a field, I'm not going to blame the inconsistency of projectiles, I'm going to blame the inconsistency of my own shot. If I'm doming people left and right in H5 I'm not gonna praise hitscan, I'm gonna praise my own shot.

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Again - you should reasses your definition of what a "good" player is because you continue to simplify it to essentially imply 100% accuracy. A good player is the one that wins the encounter, and that can imply a lot more than what you're boiling it down to which is essentially trace aiming; which actually devalues many other skillsets. There are lot more skills that make a player good outside of gunskill, movement being the most obvious. Mental skill being the other branch of game design. What you're advocating for would create a ludicrously low skill cap.

i mentioned how a counter to good aim is good movement, and good movement can include the use of angles, cover and timing. timing of which is heavily dependent on map knowledge and falls under "mental skill". you can beat someone with better aim than you in a hitscan shooter by using all of these, you just cant have terrible aim.

you dont need to be a sick pro to develop games or even be able to explain the workings behind certain implementations as evidenced by the pro community, but being a skilled and experienced player correlates with an understanding of mechanics on paper that someone who is inexperienced and sucks will not have.

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i mentioned how a counter to good aim is good movement, and good movement can include the use of angles, cover and timing. timing of which is heavily dependent on map knowledge and falls under "mental skill". you can beat someone with better aim than you in a hitscan shooter by using all of these, you just cant have terrible aim.

you dont need to be a sick pro to develop games or even be able to explain the workings behind certain implementations as evidenced by the pro community, but being a skilled and experienced player correlates with an understanding of mechanics on paper that someone who is inexperienced and sucks will not have.

If I could make you look unskilled and inexperienced at H1, would that force you to resign your stance on projectile vs hitscan? No? That's what I thought. You're demanding evidence of a correlation that fundamentally has nothing to do with whether or not projectile is better, from a guy who actually works on designing fps games. He's BEEN able to explain the workings behind different implementations of these systems. Whether or not he can compete at the highest level doesn't affect the legitimacy of those explanations or conclusions. It isn't his fault that you are choosing to default to "you must not be good" to do your heavy lifting for you because arguing mechanics isn't working in your favor.

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My opinion is that hitscan vs. projectile is nuanced and it fits some games while it does not fit others. Halo 1 with hitscan weapons would change the dynamic of the game for the worse, while projectile in Halo 2 would also change the game for the worse. For the first example (Halo 1), you can see how awkward and weird it is in MCC, where it is hitscan.

I don't think that example is the best, because MCC is still a buggy mess, but it shows at least in that game that hitscan is simply not the way to go.

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My opinion is that hitscan vs. projectile is nuanced and it fits some games while it does not fit others. Halo 1 with hitscan weapons would change the dynamic of the game for the worse, while projectile in Halo 2 would also change the game for the worse. For the first example (Halo 1), you can see how awkward and weird it is in MCC, where it is hitscan.

I don't think that example is the best, because MCC is still a buggy mess, but it shows at least in that game that hitscan is simply not the way to go.

Elaborate on how projectiles in Halo 2 would make the game worse from my view it would only make the game better and add onto the existing skill gap.